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A website set up for the proposed rules has already received 10,000 comments and Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for democratic reforms, told a news conference the debate could continue for many “weeks.”

He welcomed the Coaltion party’s offer but Drainville said he didn’t want to upset the public.

“It’s a debate that’s too important,” Drainville said on Wednesday.

“We have to leave Quebecers the time. These are their values.”

Since the charter appears stalled in its current form, in the present minority legislature, the PQ appears to have two basic options: strip it down to pass it quickly, or preserve it for possible use later as an election promise.

The PQ expressed little eagerness Wednesday to pass it quickly.

If the issue winds up becoming an election plank it would likely give the PQ two hot-button identity issues for their platform: the Marois government has already said it expects that its language law, Bill 14, will die on the order paper of the current legislature.

The PQ response came a day after Coalition Leader Francois Legault urged the government to accept a watered-down version of the charter and spare the province a “social crisis.”

Drainville said it’s premature to begin talks with the opposition parties while public debate is ongoing and that the bill has not yet been tabled.

The PQ could sit down with opponents after the bill is tabled in the fall, Drainville said.

“Before putting the final touches on the bill, we have to take into consideration all these comments we’ll receive and the debate that will take place,” the minister said.

“So we’re still talking about many weeks.”

Even International Relations Minister Jean-Francois Lisee, who had sounded a conciliatory note the previous day, was sounding less pliable.

“It’s time to have the guts to decide for real,” Lisee said Wednesday. One day earlier, Lisee had mentioned improving the charter, but clarified that he meant the temporary opt-out clauses for certain communities and institutions.

Lisee defended the PQ version of the charter again as the right option for Quebec.

The debate comes as a poll, published in La Presse on Wednesday, suggests the values plan would skyrocket in popularity if its most controversial provision — the one banning religious headwear — were removed from it.

The PQ wants to forbid public sector employees from wearing visible religious symbols including hijabs, turbans, yarmulkes and larger-than-average crucifixes.

The detailed poll on Quebec attitudes also listed four streams of thought on the subject: old-stock Catholics, concerned about the effect of immigration (29 per cent of respondents); tolerant believers, with a live-and-let-live approach to religious faith (29 per cent); closed secularists, who oppose religion in the public space (21 per cent); and open secularists, who aren’t religious but aren’t concerned about others’ expressions of faith (21 per cent).

Those findings suggest an exact 50-50 split in Quebec, between people whose worldview supports a PQ-style approach and those who oppose it.

The CROP survey of 1,000 people was conducted online from Sept. 12 to 15.